"Yes--no, I left my gun at headquarters--that doesn't matter."

Mrs. Sherwood made no comment. The wind caught her hair and whipped it about. In the distance now twinkled the lights of Jake's Place. Keith took a firmer grip on the reins, and again applied the whip. They swept into the gravelled driveway on two wheels, righted themselves, and rounded to the veranda. Keith pulled up and leaped to the ground.

n.o.body was visible. From the veranda he turned on them.

"Here, you!" he commanded Mrs. Sherwood sharply, "I can't have you in this row! Stay here, outside. You take care of her," he told Krafft.

"No, I mean it!"

On his words a scream burst from the lighted room. Keith sprang to the door, found it locked, and drew back. With a low mighty rush he thrust his shoulder against the panel near the lock. The wood splintered. He sprang forward into the room.

LXXV

After turning the key in the lock outside the parlour door Mrs. Morrell slipped along the dark veranda, pa.s.sed through a narrow hall, and entered a small back sitting-room. Jake's Place especially abounded in sitting-rooms. This particular one was next the parlour, so that one listening intently could be more or less aware of what was going on in the larger room. Here Morrell was already seated, a bottle of beer next his hand. He raised his eyebrows on her entrance, and she nodded back rea.s.suringly. She, too, sat down and helped herself to beer. Both smoked. For a long time neither said anything.

"Don't hear much in there," observed Mrs. Morrell finally, in a low guarded tone.

"Not a sound," agreed Morrell. "You don't suppose she--"

"No, I don't think so."

"Then I don't see what ails that fool, Sansome! It'd be just like him to jib."

"What does it matter?" observed Mrs. Morrell philosophically, "We don't care what is happening inside as long as those two doors stay locked until Teeny and Jimmy Ware get here."

As has been mentioned, Pop McFarlane was also of the party; but, characteristically, neither would have thought that fact worth mentioning.

"Just the same, as a matter of academic interest, I'd have expected her to make more of a row," said Morrell. "I'll wager for all her airs she runs the same gait as all the rest of you."

"Do you mean me?" demanded Mrs. Morrell, her eyes flashing dangerously.

"Moderate your voice, my dear," advised he. "My remark was wholly general of your charming s.e.x."

From the parlour now they heard faintly the first sounds of struggle.

"That's more like," he said with satisfaction. "I hate to have my ideals shattered."

Wheels became audible.

"There's Teeny, now," he observed, arising. He sauntered down the hall and looked out. "Keith!" he whispered back over his shoulder. "Where in h.e.l.l did he come from?" He continued to peer into the darkness.

"There's two others. Well, at any rate, we have plenty of witnesses!"

He turned to Mrs. Morrell. "You'd better make yourself scarce. You locked that door, you know!"

"Scarce!" she repeated, staring at him. "Where? How?"

He looked at her through narrowed lids.

"Get a horse of Jake," he said at last. "I'll meet you--oh, at the house. We'll arrange later."

He watched her rather opulent figure steal down the dim hallway. A cynical smile flashed under his moustache. He turned back to the drama before him. The buggy had disappeared; the veranda was apparently empty.

"Now I wonder who will shoot who?" speculated Morrell.

He stole to the first of the windows. The lower blinds were drawn, but the upper half of the window was clear. Morrell cautiously placed a stool nearby, and mounted it so he could see into the room. For several minutes he watched. Then his hand stole to his pocket. He produced a revolver.

LXXVI

Blinded by the light, Keith stood for a barely appreciable moment in the wrecked doorway. Sansome, startled by the crash, relaxed his efforts. Nan thrust him from her so strongly that he staggered back.

Keith's vision cleared. He appreciated the meaning of the tableau, uttered a choked growl, and advanced.

Immediately Sansome drew and presented his weapon. He was shocked far toward sobriety, but the residue of the whiskey fumes in combination with a sudden sick and guilty panic imbued him with a sort of desperation. Sansome was a bold and dashing villain only as long as things came his way. His amours had always been of the safe rather than the wildly adventurous sort. Sansome had no morals; but being found out produced effects so closely resembling those of conscience that they could not be distinguished. In the chaotic collapse of this heroic episode he managed to cling to but one thing. That was Morrell's often reiterated warning: "Don't let Keith get his hands on you!"

At the sight of his levelled weapon, Nan, who was nearest, uttered a stifled cry and made as though to throw herself on him.

"Stop!" commanded Keith, without looking toward her. But so quietly authoritative was his voice and manner that in spite of herself her impulse was checked. She remained rigid.

Keith advanced steadily on Sansome, his hands clenched at his side, his eye's fixed frowningly and contemptuously on those of the other man.

The pistol barrel was held on his breast. Sansome fully intended to shoot, but found himself unable to pull the trigger. This is a condition every rifleman knows well by experience; he calls it being "frozen on the bull's eye," when, the alignment perfect, his rifle steady as a rock, he nevertheless cannot transmit just the little nerve power necessary to crook the forefinger. Three times Sansome sent the message to his trigger finger; three times the impulse died before it had compa.s.sed the distance between his brain and his hand. This was partly because his correlations had been weakened by the drink; partly because his fuddled mind was divided between fear, guilt, despair, and a rage at himself for having got into such a mess; but princ.i.p.ally because he was hypnotically dominated by the other man's stronger personality.

So evident was this that a sudden feeling of confidence replaced in Nan the sick terror at the sight of the weapon. She seemed to know positively that here was no real peril. A wave of contempt for Sansome, even as a dangerous creature, mingled with a pa.s.sionate admiration for the man who thus dominated him unarmed.

Sansome's nerve broke. He dropped his hand, looked to right and left frantically like a rat in a corner, uttered a very ratty squeak.

Suddenly he hurled the loaded pistol blindly at Keith, and plunged bodily, with an immense crash of breaking gla.s.s, through the closed window. Keith, with a snarl of baffled rage, dashed forward.

The sight seemed to touch Nan's sense of humour. She laughed at the picture, caught her breath, gasped. Keith whirled and s.n.a.t.c.hed her fiercely in his arms.

"Nan!" he cried in an agony, "are you all right? What did that beast--"

She clung to him, still choking, on the edge of hysterics. In a moment of illumination she realized that the intangible barrier these past years had so slowly built between them had gone crashing down before the a.s.sault of the old love triumphant.

"I'm all right, dear," she gasped; "really all right. And I never was so happy in my life!"

They clung together frantically, he patting her shoulder, her cheek against his own, murmuring broken, soothing little phrases. The time and the place did not exist for them.

A scuffle outside, which they had only vaguely sensed, and which had not at all penetrated to their understandings, came to an end. Mrs.

Sherwood appeared in the doorway. Her dress was torn and dishevelled, a strand of her smooth hair had fallen across her forehead, an angry red mark showed on one cheek. But she was in high spirits. Her customary quiet poise had given place to a vibrant, birdlike, vital, quivering eagerness. To the two in the centre of the room, still clasped in each other's arms, came the same thought: that never, in spite of her ruffled plumes, in spite of the cheek already beginning to swell, had this extraordinary woman looked so beautiful! Then Keith realized that she was panting heavily, and was clinging to the doorway. He sprang to her a.s.sistance.

"What is it? Where is Krafft?" he asked.

She laughed a little, and permitted him to help her to an armchair into which she sank. She waved aside Keith's attempts to find a whole gla.s.s in the wreckage of the table.

"I'm all right," she said, "and isn't this a nice little party?"